


Five (Plus One) Phone Calls

by luvanderwon



Category: A+B (J.C. Lillis), How To Repair A Mechanical Heart (J.C. Lillis)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 16:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18154187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/pseuds/luvanderwon
Summary: Five conversations between Brandon and Abel, set between the end of How To Repair A Mechanical Heart and the events of A+B.





	Five (Plus One) Phone Calls

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a lie since at least one of these sections does not, in fact, involve a phone call.

ONE

It has been five months and Brandon is not over it. He tells himself he is doing better and chalks up small successes, the fact that he didn’t cry all week, the fact he managed not to stalk his ex-boyfriend online for an entire two days, the fact he went out with some friends from his Psychology class and had a good time. March had been hardest, with the internal war over what level of birthday contact counted as inappropriate. Logic had voted for an absolute maximum of a single, simple text message but alcohol had increasingly tempted to sway him to a twelve-page handwritten love letter and, possibly, a moonlit serenade below a bedroom window. He still feels like he’s missing a limb a lot of the time, like there’s something vital and irreplaceable that got yanked out of his heart, but he can live with it, he tells himself. He is learning to live with it.

Bec sends him daily affirmations via text: _it’s a bad day, not a bad life. you are loved. don’t mix vodka and facebook._

In his notebook which is not a journal, Brandon has marked the months by using different coloured ink from the set of rainbow gel pens Bec gave him for Christmas. January is blue, for the river he had unironically and unmusically cried. February is a black hole of despair. March is inked in red, a combination of bitterness and fierce, hot sadness that bit his mouth like an unexpected chilli pepper. April was a slimy green, packed tight with cramped scribbles of envy and a hulking loneliness. May had been blue again, a brighter blue this time – electric, steady, familiar – the bold, clinical blue of Sim’s mechanical heart. It had taken Brandon four months to dust off his fandom and dip his toes back in without wanting to stuff his fist in his mouth and scream.

He’s catching up on fanfic when his phone buzzes across the bedside table, tinny vibration battling the Castaway Planet theme ringtone. It’s probably Louis from his Intro to Philosophy class – he never takes adequate notes and Brandon is too soft to tell him he can’t crib. Louis’ blue eyes might have something to do with that. He grabs his phone without looking at it, pressing ACCEPT CALL with the side of his thumb at the same time.

His chest hurts with a phantom, icy impact when Abel sings a breezy “hee-eyy” into his ear. Brandon shoves his laptop off his knees like its scalding. He’s not sure he can breathe.

“Bran? You there?”

“Um,” Brandon croaks. “Hi?” He doesn’t mean it to sound like a question, but it’s out there too late.

“Hi. Hey. How are you? It’s been ages.”

Five months, Brandon thinks, and nine days. Not that he counts.

“A while, yeah,” he says carefully. His heart hammers at his ribcage like a moth trapped against a window, desperate to get out. He can almost feel the dust from its wings clogging up his airwaves. He’d forgotten how it felt to have it beat so fast.

“So, listen,” Abel is saying, chipper and bright and just the same as ever only not Brandon’s boyfriend anymore, “I was thinking, right – and okay, this might be a bit of a long shot and everything, but – remember at Christmas?”

Brandon remembers snow angels and pizza and the tacky silver tree in Abel’s bedroom, remembers blowing off the awkward family-get-together at his aunt’s in favour of driving to Abel’s and kissing him silly; remembers cocoa with marshmallows and exchanging sweaters and spending an entire day in bed with the heating turned all the way up because Abel had outlawed pyjamas. Literally – he’d emptied his closet of pyjamas and tossed them all out into the hallway before pinching the hem of Brandon’s Castaway Christmas sweater and declaring “this one’s banished too. Take it off.”

“I remember,” Brandon wets his lips and waits.

“Right! So we had this awesome Christmas, and you gave me my favourite tea towel ever and the sexiest boots in town, and I gave you the Castaway encyclopedia aaannddd...”

“CastieCon tickets for Atlanta,” Brandon recites. He closes his eyes and drops his head back against the wall. He can feel last summer under his fingernails and just out of reach.

“Ex _act_ ly,” Abel is grinning. “And – well, and-then-we-broke-up-and-you-gave-them-back-to-me-and-swore-you’d-never-go-to-a-con-again buuuttt,” he rushes headlong through that part like someone falling down a ski slope, before smashing straight on like a wrecking ball with: “here’s the thing. So I still have the tickets, _obviously_ , I mean I was half thinking of auctioning them but then I decided you know what, no, I’m not ready to give these babies up just yet, maybe I’ll still want to go when it comes to June, and then I just kind of – forgot – about it and, well. What do you know. It’s almost June, and I’ve still got the tickets.”

“Good for you,” Brandon says dully, his throat feeling thick.

“Brandon,” Abel says his name like he means it, like he said it the first time he phoned when they were still feeling out the space between their dorm rooms in different cities; like he used to say it into Brandon’s neck when they saw each other after weeks apart; like he said it in an elevator in Long Beach last summer. “You can’t possibly think there is anyone I would want to go to CastieCon with apart from you.”

There is so much in that sentence that Brandon wants, and so much of what he wants that is absent from it all at once.

He says the first thing that comes to mind because it’s easier than trying to parse any of what’s bubbling away in his stomach, a sort of romantic acid reflux. “Dad sold the RV.”

“He did _what_?” Abel gasps, and Brandon knows exactly how he’s clasped a hand to his heart in shock. “How could he!” Then, before Brandon can get into the unnecessary and boring explanation that begins with kids leaving home and his parents’ changing circumstances and ends with _also I told him I’d never drive it again because just looking at it made me think of you_ , Abel rockets on: “it doesn’t matter. No biggie. It’s – what, twelve hours? We can road trip it in your car and just get a motel for a couple of nights. I’ll pay for the gas and the room. Please? You know you want to.”

That’s exactly the problem: Brandon does want to.

 

TWO

Abel breaks up with Jason two weeks after he nearly kisses Brandon in Atlanta, but it doesn’t matter. There will be other boys, of course – there are always other boys. There is Simon with the mauve hair, and then Leon who rides a motorcycle and has chains swinging from the pockets of his jeans. There’s Texan Jack, and Spanish Tony, and Marching Band Pete who plays the clarinet and has the lips to prove it. Abel dates squirrel-faced Joe for all of a week, takes Laurie the barista out seven times before Laurie admits he’s poly and has two other partners already, and spends a filthy weekend with Abraham from his Screenwriting class where they nurture extravagant pipedreams about setting up a film company and calling it Abe&Abe Productions, in between trying out new things to do with their bodies. In the end, though – none of these boys matter all that much, because there is only one thing that they ever have in common with one another: none of them is anything like Brandon.

The convention had been fun and the road trip hilarious once the initial awkwardness was over. They’d had half an hour of Abel’s nervous rambling about anything and nothing while Brandon fixed his eyes on the road and failed to venture more than a hum in response to anything. Then forty minutes of nothing said at all, just the scenery to take in to the soundtrack of Brandon’s iPod. “See your music taste hasn’t changed,” Abel had muttered at the end of a Damien Rice album, ready to launch into a rant about the boringness of samey indie shit, except then the iPod had flipped to the next playlist – which was apparently titled _Team Abandon_ and the track list looked an awful lot like the mixtape Abel had made Brandon for Christmas.

Three tracks in and they were both singing along, and by the end of the playlist the road trip felt normal. Better than normal – they had six months of nerding to catch up on and a large gap to refill with old in-jokes and the memories that made them laugh rather than cry. At least three hours of the journey had been giggled reminiscences that began “remember when”. Once they’d had to pull over because Brandon was laughing too hard to drive safely.

Everything had been perfect until the second night in their motel room, when beer and tiredness and déjà-vu had their mouths almost touching, the warmth of Brandon’s lips right there for the taking, and Abel – damn it, he should have run and run with it, but – Abel had pulled back and confessed “sorry, I – I’m actually seeing someone.”

After a beat of embarrassed silence, his cheeks bleeding themselves a mottled scarlet, Brandon had muttered “of course you are,” and that had been that.

It had never been serious with Jason anyway, but Abel has morals about cheating and – reams of regret and hours spent lamenting the missed opportunity aside – he’s still proud of himself for sticking to those guns. Not Jason’s guns – which he’d had, and they were super impressive and did all sorts of wicked things to Abel’s stomach when he’d thought about them back then – what is it about men’s biceps that turns him into such a quivering randy mess of jelly-like desire?

It’s Spring Break, nearly Abel’s birthday, and nearly nine months since he saw or heard from Brandon. Long enough to grow a baby, Abel thinks irritably, hauling his backpack up the steps to his parents’ house. Imagine if mpreg was a thing, for real, Brandon could be showing up with a little bundle of half-droid-joy on his hip tomorrow and telling Abel to step up to his responsibilities like they were living out a soap opera.

Except that would imply that Brandon is likely to show up at Abel’s house which, judging by the precedent set by the end of last summer, Thanksgiving and all of Christmas and New Year break, is not going to happen.

Abel spends some time catching up with his sister and his parents before pleading end of semester exhaustion and taking himself off to moulder in a bubble bath until his toes wrinkle. Afterwards, what he wants to do is swaddle himself in comfort clothes and rewatch his favourite fanvids from his fellow Castaway vloggers, possibly with an entire chocolate cake so he can blame crying and feeling sick on that rather than latent ex-boyfriend feelings. It always hurts more when he’s back in Blanton. His mom had petted his hair at Christmas, when Abel had most certainly not been compulsively checking his phone every ten minutes for a text that wasn’t coming, and told him that made perfect sense – it’s always harder to forget a heartbreak when you’re walking through the places where it had felt fullest. Abel had needed to go and binge-read some of the very worst Cadsim fanfic to bleach that conversation from his brain. It just wasn’t normal when his mom got all philosophical and gentle about his boy-feelings. Abel thought they’d left that behind when he’d graduated from high school and decided he was an adult.

Annoyingly, the only comfortable hoodie he can find in the back of his closet is one of Brandon’s – because of course it is, because his life feels like a cliché fanfic today, because he’s about to curl up on the bed where eighteen months ago he and Brandon had moved from fucking to _fucking_ and now that is all Abel can think about so of course, of fucking _course_ that stupid hoodie is the only thing he can find to wear.

He could dig something out of his weekend backpack of course, but – no.

Deciding that the evening is already foretold and he’s going to end up ugly crying before midnight anyway, Abel unearths his laptop, powers up, and settles in for a good, solid ex-boyfriend stalk.

There’s a photo on Brandon’s Facebook that was posted yesterday, and Abel immediately starts analysing it for signs. Of what, he isn’t sure, but he pulls the laptop screen up close and squints, needing to know whether anything about Brandon has changed. He’s still wearing plaid shirts. He doesn’t look any thinner or fatter, and there are no obvious signs of hickeys. Abel’s mouth aches with the memory of Brandon’s skin.

His eyes narrow as he zooms in on the windowsill behind Brandon, where Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus are sitting under a miniature plastic Christmas tree. For half a second, Abel almost smiles, and then his gut twists with a rancid cocktail of hurt and anger and he slams the laptop closed so hard that later he’ll have to check he didn’t smash the screen.

He waits until Sunday morning to show up on Brandon’s parents’ doorstep and demand his toy back.

“What, really?” Brandon folds his arms and leans against the doorframe, looking unimpressed. Abel wasn’t expecting that. That is the stance of someone who wants to fight. Not fistfight, obviously, this is Brandon – they both know how pathetic that would be after that one time in Atlanta. “It’s been nearly a year and now all you’ve got to say is that you want Plastic Cadmus?”

“Oh, you wanted me to call?” Abel glares, “you could have called.”

“Right, yeah, I could have called after you flirted me all the way to Atlanta and then told me you were seeing someone else already.”

“I did not _flirt-_ ”

“Oh yes, that’s right, I forgot, blatant flirting is just regular conversation in Abel McNaughton Land. You’re not having Plastic Cadmus, go away.”

“He’s rightfully mine!”

“Nuh-uh, not anymore. You forfeited your rights when you broke up with me. You’re the one who left, you don’t get to keep the assets.”

Abel kicks the base of a plant pot on Brandon’s parents’ porch. It’s meant to vent his annoyance but all it does is stub his toe and bring tears prickling in the corners of his eyes. Note to self: turquoise Chucks are not appropriate garden decor abuse footwear. “I should get visitation rights,” he snaps.

“Only if he wants to see you,” Brandon snaps back. “Maybe he doesn’t want to see you. Maybe he’s still pissed at you for leaving.”

“Are you,” Abel stops and scrutinises Brandon – fluffy-haired because he’s still in his pyjamas, which are plaid because of course they are, with fat wedges of fleece-lined slippers on his feet and a red Loyola sweatshirt tugged down over his shirt. The tails poke out the bottom and one half of the collar is sticking up around his neck. There are pillow creases on one cheek and he looks too tired to be really angry. “Are you talking about yourself in the third person?”

Brandon shrugs one mutinous shoulder and pouts. “Maybe,” he mutters reluctantly.

Abel deflates, all the fight and frustration and self-righteous indignation going out of him with a sigh like the whistle of air leaving a sad party balloon. The space it leaves behind fills up swiftly with a swathe of _missing_. He wants to put his arms around Brandon, to dig his fingers into the scruff of Brandon’s hair and make it even messier. He bites his lips together for a moment, and then summons the nerve to admit “this is stupid. I just wanted to see you.”

For a stark, cold second, he actually thinks Brandon is going to shut the door in his face.

The timid “we could maybe get brunch?” is not at all what he was anticipating, but Abel feels his face light up at the suggestion.

“Really?”

“Let me just get – dressed,” Brandon frowns at himself and his pyjamas, and Abel wants to scoop up an armload of how cute he is all fresh out of bed and flustered and roll around in that.

He waits on the porch while Brandon makes himself look halfway respectable, feeling intrusive and awkward about going inside the house after all this time. The spring sunshine dances off the cheerful yellow of the daffodils in the front yard. Abel watches the clouds and wonders whether it would be too much to invite Brandon over for his birthday next week. It’s not like he has anything planned other than whatever monstrous cake Susannah’s got it in mind to bake this year.

When Brandon emerges ten minutes later, looking scrubbed and neat in jeans and – shockingly – not plaid, Abel almost regrets letting him get dressed at all. He looks sheepish, and holds his hand up, opening his palm. Plastic Cadmus and Plastic Sim are nestled there.

“They wanted to tag along,” he says, pink at the neck.

Abel leans down to get on eye-level with the action figures. “Hey guys,” he whispers. “Did you miss me?”

Brandon hands them over and roots his car keys out of his jacket pocket, twirling them around his finger by the keyring. There’s a leather keyfob shaped like a rocket ship which Abel doesn’t recognise. He tucks the action figures into the breast pocket of his shirt, like they used to do for filming their vlog posts. 

“Okay,” he decides as they get into the car. “You can have custody. But I want holiday visits and regular photo updates.”

Brandon shoots him a cool sideways glance that makes Abel’s toes curl in his mismatched socks. When did Brandon get so good at being unintentionally smooth? “I’ll make a blog,” he says drily.

“You should,” Abel nods, and just about manages to bite his tongue on the instant suggestion that they film a vlog over brunch on his phone, for old times’ sake.

 

THREE

6.13AM - Message from Abel:  _bran. pls_

Brandon replies:  _What in the sam hill are you doing awake at this hour?_

6.15AM - Message from Abel:  _i need u_

Brandon replies:  _Are you crawling your way home from another seedy cocktail night in the world's worst drag bar?_

6.17AM - Message from Abel:  _no just my boyfs_

6.18AM - Message from Abel:  _exboyf_

6.18AM - Message from Abel:  _fuck_

Brandon replies:  _Oh shit honey, you too? I'll call you, give me five._

 

“What do you mean, _you too_?” Abel sniffles when he picks up the phone.

“Come on, as if I can hang on to a guy for more than half a year,” Brandon shakes lightness into the words like he’s salting an aubergine. “Tell me what happened?”

“I’m too excited,” Abel recites, “apparently.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Fucked if I know. He just said it was exhausting.”

“What, so he dumped you for being positive and cheerful most of the time?”

“Looks like it.”

“Wow. Sounds... fake,” Brandon frowns, “but okay.”

“I wish it was fake. It’s like the beginning of a bad romcom,” Abel sighs.

“Welcome to my world.”

“So how about you? What happened with Jared?”

“Ugh,” Brandon lets out a great huff of air, “the usual.”

“Being?”

“You should know.”

“I’m sorry, Tin Man.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“We’re pathetic, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“What would our boys do?”

“Dump us, it seems.”

“Not those boys,” Abel manages to snort something that wants to be a laugh but sounds more like a hedgehog’s fart. “What would Cadmus and Sim do?”

“Sim would wonder why he still had emotions and then he’d get some diagnostic scan run and they’d discover that when his evolution chip was removed a tiny shard got splintered off and is still inside his chest causing emotional pain. And then he’d have that removed and never have to suffer again.”

“Damn,” Abel breathes out long and low. “I guess Cadmus would just go and punch some inanimate objects and drink whisky or something.”

“You sound uninspired, love.”

“Yup.”

“You know what we should do? We should take a break. Just – go away for a week somewhere. Anywhere. Leave all the baggage and breakup bullshit behind and just. I don’t know. Lounge on a beach and talk about stupid beach sex Cadsim porn.”

“I am completely and one hundred percent up for that,” Abel agrees, “but are you sure you’re actually Brandon Page and not an imposter? Because that sounded a lot like – ohh, I don’t know, spontaneity? Possibly even a small amount of risk-taking? If I find out that you’re one of Xaarg’s minions and you’ve compromised my favourite android, we’re going to be exchanging some harsh words.”

It has been nearly three years. They don’t talk regularly but they always meet up when they’re home, and they follow each other online religiously. Brandon’s photo journal blog about the adventures of Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus is unsurprisingly popular, and Abel started making videos again. There are regular text messages – strings of them sometimes, just old jokes and references pinging back and forth, one after the other.

The long weekend in a cabin in the woods is rustic, ridiculous, and romantic – not that either of them are acknowledging that. Abel steals one of Brandon’s soft cotton plaid shirts “because we’re in a _cabin_ in the _woods_ , I need to look the part – shit, this is like your whole aesthetic, isn’t it?” The first night they spend watching old favourite episodes of Castaway Planet, eating cinnamon jellybeans, catching each other up on the respective horrors of their senior years, and commiserating about their freshly splintered hearts. There are two bedrooms, and they both go to bed congratulating themselves on not being too obviously disappointed about that.

On the second night, Brandon builds a campfire, Abel admires his skills, they make snickerdoodle-s’mores and take a series of increasingly stupid photos for Brandon’s blog. Plastic Sim comes dangerously close to getting melted, and has to be rescued by Plastic Cadmus in a feat of greatly dashing heroics.

They successfully resist the urge to make out until they have to say goodbye.

It happens when Brandon drops Abel at the Greyhound stop. The hug is easy, they’ve spent the last three days bumping shoulders, cuddling on the couch, tickling, laughing, dancing in the kitchen and bolstering each other up both emotionally and physically. Abel smells like cinnamon as usual, and Brandon has missed that, the dusty sweetness, the comfort of being wrapped up in that scent. It smells like summer time, fairgrounds, realisation, and learning to like the skin he’s in. It smells like the coiled remnants of first love which will always be nestled somewhere in his heart, interrupting its mechanical workings.

He tucks his face into Abel’s warm neck; breathes him in. It’s a tight hug, a clinging squeeze of gratitude and regret all at once. Brandon runs his nose up the side of Abel’s throat, nuzzling, and finds his mouth without thinking it through. It’s a clutching, clinging sort of affair, this kiss – one that smacks of neediness and tastes of half-forgotten sorrow; fingers bunched in shirt fabric trying to wring out the last drops of something the other doesn’t have. It doesn’t feel like any of their other kisses. It’s too desperate, too hollow.

Stupidly, they kiss until three minutes before Abel has to get on his bus, so there’s no time to talk about it.

“I’m a mess,” he says when he calls Brandon two hours later. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped.”

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have started,” Brandon replies. “I’m a mess, too.”

“Can we – not be each other’s rebound?” Abel sighs. “I like you too much.”

“Same,” Brandon agrees. “Never speak of it again?”

“Deal.”

 

FOUR

“Monday catch up isn’t meant to go down this road,” Abel hums when Brandon’s finished laughing about that time they fell off the bed in the middle of doing it and Abel thought he’d broken his own knee.

It has been five years. Monday night phone calls are a regular thing now that they live on opposite sides of the country. It’s an opportunity to catch up, to check in; it’s a reminder that when other men are awful they’ve still got someone to indulge them as they wallow and cheer them up by reading badfic down the phone.

They never talk about Them.

Until they do; until Brandon’s reply is “good job it’s already Tuesday then huh,” because it’s after midnight in Baltimore and he’s had a shit day and Bec’s moving out of their shared flat with her boyfriend next week and, dammit, he’s lonely. “You know the last time I kissed someone was nearly five months,” he sighs, and runs the tip of one finger along the edge of his windowsill, leaning his head against the glass and trying to make out the stars. “He looked a bit like you.”

“Did he kiss a bit like me?”

“Nuh-uh. No one kisses like you, A.”

“Aww.”

“D’you – ever miss it? Us?”

There’s a pause on Abel’s end. Brandon tries to picture him, but falls short – he hasn’t visited California yet; doesn’t know what Abel’s place looks like or how his furniture is arranged. He knows there’s a blue sofa and a cat that wanders in and out. Brandon closes his eyes and crafts a mental image of Abel stretched out on a blue chaise longue with a cat draped decadently over the backrest. Unfortunately, it looks a bit like he wants to be drawn like one of Brandon’s French girls, only Brandon doesn’t have French girls and he can’t draw for shit.

He shakes his head. That picture derailed fast.

“I do actually,” Abel is telling him, his voice warm and sweet like cinnamon spiced honey in Brandon’s ear. “That’s normal, though, right? To get nostalgic about your first love?”

“I guess.”

“Are you having regrets over there? It’s understandable, I am amazing.”

“No, just – wondering – I mean... imagine if we’d met now, instead of then.”

“Please, Tin Man, you’d probably have taken orders by now if I hadn’t happened to your eighteen year old self. There never would have been any hope for us.”

“Come on, I know you’ve got a priest-kink in there somewhere, Captain. Just think, you could have been single-handedly responsible for my second crisis of faith.”

“Excuse you, I would have used both hands.”

“Oh, would you.”

“Mmhm I know what you like,” Abel purrs. Something rebels in Brandon’s stomach, a tiny tidal thing that wants to turn; feels the pull of the moon.

His throat constricts, too full with things he won’t say. “Damn emotional history,” he forces out through his teeth. “Getting in the way of something that could be so good if it started now instead.”

“What, your conversion out of a cassock?”

“Thank you very much, I’m a Unitarian now.”

“Mm but would you be, if we hadn’t had our amazing summer of nerdlove and sizzling hot sex, and you only met me now for the very first time?”

Brandon lets out a sigh which keeps going and going until his chest hurts and the space below his ribs feels dry and concave. “Don’t let’s talk about the sex,” he murmurs.

“Why not?” Abel challenges. “Too tempting?”

“You’re in California.”

“Oh, baby, _now_ you’re telling me we could hook up? Now I’m on the west coast? Your timing sucks, Bran.”

“Yeah. We’d never go through with it anyway, though.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“You like me too much, remember?”

“I do like you too much,” Abel concedes, and there’s something shivering, unspoken, in that: Brandon can’t tell whether he still means _I like you too much to spoil things with a casual hookup_ or _I like you too much for this friendship to be all I want anymore._

When they hang up, there’s an itch like a bee sting between Brandon’s shoulders and he goes to sleep with his face shoved deep into his pillow as if that will block out all the troubles of having feelings. He dreams about candy floss and kisses, and wakes up with a heavy metal ache between his teeth.

 

FIVE

“Two things,” Abel says when he picks up the phone at four-thirty-two. “One: have I told you that I changed your avatar in my phone to the Android android? Because I did, and it’s awesome. Number two: it’s half past four in the damn morning, Bran, why?”

“Wedding’s off,” Brandon mumbles. “He dumped me.”

Abel sits down – right where he is, right in the middle of his kitchen floor, a packet of strawberry pop tarts in one hand. He waits for the laughter, the punchline to this horrible joke. Brandon has been with Josh for almost four years, only a little longer than Abel has been the official proprietor of the coolest bar in California. They’d got serious right around the time he’d decided to buy the building which is now St Castaways, and Brandon had flown out for a week to help him decorate. He’d brought Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus and insisted that Abel hang on to them – _bar-warming gift, they belong here. Anyway, I don’t think they want to live with a stepdad._ The way he’d pulled his mouth to the side and turned his head away told Abel his suspicions were correct, that _they belong here_ was code for _my boyfriend thinks my fandom toys are weird_. He’d have been more prejudiced against Josh if he hadn’t really seemed to make Brandon happy in every other respect.

If he hadn’t really seemed to love him.

Abel had cried at his cat when they got engaged six months ago, and Franny had stared at him unsympathetically. _I know, it’s been ten years, I should get over it_ , he’d agreed. Franny had pushed the silky smooth top of her head into his outstretched palm, purred and blinked, and then flopped on her side like a sack of beans to stretch and woo him into opening a packet of her favourite treats.

“He – what?” he croaks now.

“Broke up with me. It’s over, A.”

“No, hold on, back up, he did WHAT?” The explosion is a little late to class but no less outraged for it. “That’s not – he can’t just – no. No. This is not okay. This is not how it’s meant to go – you love him, it’s supposed to _work_. I thought he was Prince Boring-but-Charming!”

“You thought he was boring?”

“Well. He didn’t approve of fandom. I mean. What the hell.”

“He left me for a proctologist,” Brandon divulges.

“Isn’t that a butt surgeon?”

“Yes.”

“Like... someone who solves poop issues? A shit fixer?”

“...yes.”

“Dumped for a dump doctor,” Abel sighs, “oh man. That is – there’s a lot of comedy to be had there my friend. Maybe not today. But you know – if you’re going to get chucked then it’s good to know it’s at least an investment in future pun-fun, right?”

Brandon laughs, and for a second it’s delirious, old-school, like hopping back ten years in time and lying on the floor of a long-sold RV. And then it’s not anymore, it’s ugly all of a sudden, a choking grimace of a sound that catches on something sharp and sour like nettle juice or grape seeds, and hiccups itself out into something that isn’t laughter at all.

“You’re crying,” Abel can feel panic welling in his chest because his best friend, the love of his life, is crying and it’s the bad kind, the hopeless disaster kind that leaves snot trails everywhere and gives a man a thumping migraine, and he – useless, honestly – is on the other side of the God damned country. “Are you crying, Bran? Talk to me.”

What he gets in response is something mostly like a wail.

“Fuck.” Scrambling to his feet, the pop tart packet tumbling to the floor and spilling its contents on the tiles, Abel murmurs soft nonsense into the phone as he heads to his room and starts throwing underwear into a backpack. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, it might just be words strung together on a wire of anxiety, like Christmas lights that flicker and aren’t sure how long their fuse will hold out. There’s only crying on the other end: a whole lot of crying, and Abel wants to fold up the map of the United States, over and over until California and Maryland are touching, pressed together, so he can press Brandon back together too, and between them they can smooth the creases out again in their own time.

He needs to check there’s money for a flight on his credit card, and ask Kira if she can cover for him – and if she can’t, then he’ll have to ask her to close the bar for a few days. Abel doesn’t think the benefits of being his own boss are often worth the hassle of tax returns and profit margins when all he wants to do is have a good geeky time while drinking beer, but in this moment he finds himself incredibly grateful that there’s nobody he needs to defer to. He checks his wristwatch – four-fifty. It’s a Wednesday. He can get to the airport in an hour if he calls a taxi.

“Can I come and stay with you for a bit?” Brandon interrupts his whirlwind plotting. He’s still tearful, but the worst of the wailing seems to be over. “I just really don’t want to be here right now,” he adds, with a choky sob, and Abel can feel his fucking heart breaking nearly three thousand miles away and it hurts like a fist to the solar plexus.

“Are you fucking kidding, why aren’t you here already,” he vibrates.

A weak laugh. It’s not very convincing, but it’s better than tears. “It’s only been six hours,” Brandon says.

“Halfway here, then,” Abel amends. “You could be halfway here by now. Get yourself a flight booked, right now. I’ll make cookies. Also, what the hell, how did it take you six _hours_ to call me? You idiot. You could be halfway here. Sort that out, Bran, stat. I’m already flexing my cuddle muscles, get yourself here and make use of them.”

 

PLUS ONE

The sun is hot on his neck, and Brandon should probably be wearing sunscreen. It feels ridiculous, though, at this time of the morning. He dragged himself out of bed early to call Bec, because she’s three hours ahead of him and he wants to catch her on her lunch break. It’s been a few weeks since they spoke.

Franny rubs around his legs – cupboard love, but he hasn’t brought her any treats. She stares at him balefully before stalking off to hunt flies in the long grass.

“So I’m, er – not coming home,” he tells Bec after ten minutes of her trying to be tactful about asking how he’s doing heart-wise.

“What, ever?” she chirps – too cheerful to have taken him seriously.

“Um – yeah,” Brandon rubs the back of his neck – hot; a sheen of sweat already licking over his skin. Damn. It’s barely ten a.m. and it’s November. What even is California. At least he won’t need to ship out his east coast winter clothes. “Actually,” that reminds him, “do you fancy a visit? And can you bring some of my stuff?”

“Brandon,” Bec says, flat and unimpressed.

“Bec?”

“Look, I know you’ve had a bad year and what happened was shitty as all hell, and I’m really glad you were able to get away and that,” she sighs. Brandon can picture her twirling a hank of her hair around two fingers. “You know that, but-”

“I got back together with A.”

“Come again.”

“We got back together.”

“You.”

“Me.”

“And Abel.”

“Yes.”

“I’m doing the eyebrows.”

“Don’t do the eyebrows.”

“I fucking knew this would happen,” Bec’s second sigh is hot and frustrated, and Brandon can’t tell if she’s being pessimistic or if she’s genuinely worried.

“Thanks for the head’s up, then,” he says, lightly. “Because I didn’t.”

“This is mad. You’re mad. Has all that sun gone to your head? You got back together with your first love what, three months after your fiancé left you? This is. Probably not good, Bran. Maybe not sensible?”

Brandon thinks about this – thinks about those words, those facts, that reality that his oldest friend is painting for him with her usual palette of practicality and caution. But the thing is – it’s nothing he hasn’t already fought his way through. It’s nothing he hasn’t spent his time picking to pieces in his head ever since Abel met him at the airport the day after Josh broke off their engagement. Saying goodbye to his former fiancé had felt like screwing a lid on tight to a sticky, unforgiving jam jar of disappointment. Hugging Abel hello had been more like a careful loosening of screws on something he’d locked up a long time ago and always regretted tossing away the key.

He thinks about the stomach ache of thrilling, nervous disbelief when Abel had said _I want you back_ , his instincts going into overdrive and flashing _run, run, run_ through his head like a broken exit sign. He thinks about the three hours he’d spent pacing and fretting and trying to dig up reasons why this was a bad idea, reasons like Bec has just given him, and how none of them would stick; they all had cracks and crumbled under his pathetic defences, dissolving into the dust of _but this is what I want._

He thinks about kissing behind the screen in the Church of Abandon to a soundtrack of Halloween revelry and dance music. About how he’d screwed up his courage in both fists and felt determination climb up his legs from the cheap boots he’d scavenged in a thrift store that afternoon, had barely even noticed who or what else was happening in the room at the top of the stairs because he was focused immediately, entirely, on Abel in his white Sim suit with his blue streaked hair and his wide eyes. Brandon thinks about how he’d grabbed Abel by his sleeve and tugged him behind the screen and up against the wall and the only thing he regrets about that is that he hadn’t gone straight for the shirt collar like they were in a movie. He remembers the tipsy crack in Abel’s voice when he’d squeaked “really?” and how everything had fallen into the right place when he’d replied “shut up” and put his mouth on Abel’s to enforce that. It was amazing what a stupid last minute costume could do for a person’s attitude.

He thinks about driving them to Long Beach on a whim, because why the hell not; because if they were going to do nostalgia they might as well go the whole hog. They hadn’t been able to get the same room they’d had ten years earlier in the hotel, but that was probably for the best since single beds were only made for one and neither of them were scrawny eighteen year olds anymore. They’d asked for a double room instead, and then Abel had said “no, no. Scratch that. Honeymoon suite, please,” and Brandon hadn’t wanted to argue that even for a moment, never mind that it was too expensive and, frankly, a ridiculously unnecessary extravagance.

The rest of the night had been peppered with I-love-yous and painted in kisses, finding what they each hadn’t forgotten about each other’s bodies and all the different ways they still fitted together; lost puzzle pieces dug out from underneath the sofa and finally able to make a whole picture again. By the time Abel was sober they were both hungry, so they’d called for room service at half past three in the morning and fed each other sandwiches, toasting themselves with coffee. And coffee in the small hours meant there wasn’t any point trying to sleep afterwards, so they took matching hotel bathrobe selfies, made out in the shower (without Brandon’s boxers this time), and lamented not having the good sense to bring more condoms than those they’d already used.

“Or it’s amazing,” he tells Bec, unable to stop the teenage grin he can feel crawling over his face, stretching his mouth and his words and he knows she can tell. There are love bites on his collar and his hair is a grabby-fingered mess and he smells like Abel’s shampoo and cinnamon jelly beans and he’s sore down the backs of his thighs with rug burn on his knees and he doesn’t care, because he’s happy.

“Is it?” Bec double-checks, and her voice feels low and warm like the California sun.

“Yeah,” Brandon tells her, and means it. “Yeah, it is.”


End file.
